These are just my opinions. I cannot promise that I will be perfect, but I can promise that I will seek to understand and illuminate whatever moves that the Giants make (my obsession and compulsion). I will share my love of baseball and my passion for the Giants. And I will try to teach, best that I can. Often, I tackle the prevailing mood among Giants fans and see if that is a correct stance, good or bad.

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Thursday, February 22, 2007

Giants Middle of the Pack in BP Top 100 Prospects

Baseball Prospectus's Kevin Goldstein released their Top 100 prospects list yesterday and the Dan Agonistes website was kind enough to not only present the list but sort it by team. The Giants have 3 players on the list:

6) Tim Lincecum

64) Angel Villalona

73) Jonathan Sanchez

Now with 30 MLB teams, the average team has 3.3 prospects on the list, so the Giants are about average. There are a number of teams with more than the average amount, so that puts the Giants a little above the median. He lists the Devil Rays and the Rockies as tied for first with 7 prospects each on the Top 100 list. The Yankees are tied for third with the Angels and the Diamondbacks with 5 each. The Brewers are tied with Braves, D-gers, Marlins, Mets, and Twins for 6th with 4 each. That means the Giants are tied with 10 other teams for 12th with 3 each. That leaves 9 teams with 2 or less prospects on the list.

Didn't think about where they were relatively, good point. Given that Villalona is 16, I think that's about where I would expect him to be - any higher and that's some extrapolation.

I thought Sanchez was about where he would be, maybe a little low.

I would not have thought that Cowart would be there. As dominating as he was, it was still at the lower rungs of the minors and he does not have the "stuff" scouts look for in a major league pitcher. The expectations is that better hitters, as he moves up, will figure him out and there goes that. But, yeah, as a Giants fan, he should definitely be on our radar, good one.

One name that I've seen on another Top 100 list (which I was going to write about first but never got around to) was Nick Pereira. Oddly enough, the same analyst has him on his Top 50 Fantasy Prospect list (46th; Lincecum was 10th) as well as on his Top 100 Fantasy Prospect list (89th; Lincecum was 8th, despite addition of Dice-K and Igawa above him), the first coming out end of last year, the second coming out earlier this month.

But that concerns contribution for 2007 season. On this analyst's Top 15 prospects for SF, Perrira was 11th on the team. I'll have to write about all these soon.

My best guess, as I was alluding to when noting when they came out, is that the first Top 50 that went out with the Baseball Forecaster 2007 Edition was probably put together at the end of the 2006 season, maybe in the Oct/Nov timeframe, in order to publish by year end. Then when he put together the Top 100 that went out in his Minor League Analyst book that published earlier this month, he had additional time to go through additional scouting reports, interviews with scouts and GMs (I'm assuming he has a network of people to talk with), and he came away more impressed with Lincecum, hence his relative rise, and less impressed with Pereira, and that might have nothing to do with Pereira himself, as since this is fantasy baseball analysis, perhaps he realized, as any Giants fan would already know, that Pereira's chances of making the Giants roster in 2007 is pretty zilch unless there are massive injuries and/or poor performances on the starting staff or the bullpen staff, for as good as he did in 2006, he is still pretty down on the depth charts for promotion to the majors either as a starter or reliever. This he can change totally, of course, with a good to great year in AAA. And I like his chances of doing that, based on what I've read about him.

Valdez I think we have to shelve as a serious prospect until he first comes back and prove he's healthy, and second, actually make it up to the majors. He has been hyped so badly, I need to see results now, else there are more interesting players to follow. Kind of like Threets, though I hope he has recovered from his problems, he would have been called up last season had he been healthy at the time.

I'm guessing, since he's not on the list, for some reason, he thought Sanchez is not eligible.

MLBA Fantasy 100:8. Tim Lincecum63. Kevin Frandsen89. Nick Pereira

This illustrates what happens when you are not successful and get a high draft pick (SF and Lincecum) vs. when you are successful and get a draft pick in the 20-30 range (Oakland and no highly ranked prospects), which I've written about previously in my discussions about the Giants successes (or lack thereof) in drafts.

I, Me, Mine

Wow, this was easy and amazingly free. I am a big Giants fan and I hope to use my experience in business (MBA) and analytics (nearly 25 years) to bring up interesting facts to other Giants fans so that we may better understand the team's chances for success (or not) and hopefully share their insights with me. Please read my "OGC's Business Plan" link to better understand what my philosophy is for building a successful MLB team.
I want to teach and share my love of baseball and, in particular, my love for the San Francisco Giants. I will believe to my dying days that Bobby Bonds should be in Baseball’s Hall of Fame for being one of the few to bring the combination of power and speed to the game.
Why a blog? I love technology and society and just wanted to participate in this trend to see what it felt like. Plus I have a lot of questions I would like answered about the Giants and since I don't see anyone else tackling them, I've taken it upon myself to do it. Not that I'm that special, but just that I'm willing to put in the time to investigate them.